CNN Final Generic: Ten Points, 52-42

As hunter, outdoosman, and Lyme disease awareness advocate Wellington Winchell Wolf sagely observed, "Gentlemen, let's not start plucking each other's ticks just yet."

But 52-42 is pretty solid, and while I don't eally want to bank on it, I know a lot of people are adding on 5 points to represent typical Republican overperformance at the actual polling places as compared to the polls.

"Six in ten suburban voters say they plan to vote for the Republican candidate for the U.S. House on Tuesday,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “That's not good news for the Democrats since most of the seats in play are in suburban districts."

...

The survey indicates that 44 percent have a favorable view of the GOP, with 43 percent saying they hold an unfavorable view. Forty-six percent of the country has a favorable view of the Democratic Party compared to 47 percent with an unfavorable view.

Fox News' last poll showed the public split on the GOP -- 44% favorable, 44% unfavorable -- but had Democrats at 42% favorable, 50% unfavorable.

Although previous elections have been wrongly called "permanent realignments," this election will produce one permanent, but limited, realignment: The South will now be almost uniformly red. Democrats have been able to hang on to congressional districts there, and even statewide, based on talking a good game about moderation and being blue-dogs and other such bullshit, and also based on the South's let's-get-over-it-already animus against Lincoln's Republican Party.

That's over. A few Democrats will persist in majority-minority urban districts, and maybe one fluke hold-out, but from now on the South will finally be Republican territory up and down the ballot. The spectacle of so many "Blue Dogs" voting with Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama on the stimulus and health care put lie to the idea of a "conservative Democrat."

posted by Ace at 04:31 PM

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